And I do know that class of fresher well (and no need to excuse your writing, here or elsewhere). But they're probably not the ones I see in town, or even the ones I knew at university; they're the ones I only saw creeping in and out of their rooms very occasionally, and I wanted to go and say hello but I didn't have the faintest idea how to begin and besides they wouldn't want to know me because they were the clever ones, but I lived in fear that one day they'd die in there and nobody would know.

I know it was tangential to what you were writing about; they're not the ones you see, but it was something I felt that I wanted to write (sorry for dumping it into your journal...) having read what you'd written above.

they wouldn't want to know me because they were the clever ones

No, they were - and are - the ones who're so scared by a life opening up, by failure - by success - that a paranoid stasis seems preferable to getting involved, leaving yourself open to be changed, because seeking acceptance means also the possibility of rejection.

That's not clever, that's just (in the true, not playground sense) sad.

I know that now. But at the time it seemed as though they were just too far above me in intellectual matters for me to presume to meet them on emotional grounds. And I didn't think there was much that I, being an ugly neurotic mess, could offer these people who looked so self-contained, so competent and clever and, well, grown-up, while I was still running around drinking and shouting and wearing daft clothes, like a child let loose in playgroup.

And I didn't think there was much that I, being an ugly neurotic mess, could offer these people who looked so self-contained, so competent and clever and, well, grown-up, while I was still running around drinking and shouting and wearing daft clothes, like a child let loose in playgroup.

I wonder whether you see how very very appealing the ability to run around drinking and shouting and wear daft clothes - the freedom to let yourself do your own thing even if it involves making mistakes - can come across to people struggling with a cocoon of paralysing terror at the thought of doing... anything at all, really. Not that this is necessarily a good thing for such a person to act on - it's way too easy to overcompensate once you do get out of the cocoon, or at least I found it so.

I still feel as though I'm not grown up enough for most of my peers.

There are values of "grown-up" I've fought hard against becoming, and others I've had to work on - still am working on - undoing. [ work-related guilt ethics are a large pile of no fun at all. ] Think I'm doing OK at being open to new opportunities and cool things coming my way, rather than being "sensible" in ways that preclude taking the odd chance.